U.S. Historical Snow Data Base

The objective of this project is to construct a critically- verified historical data base of snowfall, snow cover and snow water equivalent in the United States for the last 100 years using the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) archives. The data base will be used to assess the capabilities of general circulation models in the simulation of snow cover and snow- climate interactions and assess the utility of using snow records as indicators of climatic change. The data base will be assembled at NCDC by the principal investigator during the first year of the project, and analysed in cooperation with modelers during the second year. Snow is a critical element of the climate system. Climate models and empirical studies suggest that snow anomalies are associated with synoptic and long-term weather events and may play an important role in climate change. However, there remain many unanswered questions regarding the variability of snow, the representativeness of short-term empirical studies and the accuracy of the modeling of snow-climate interactions which need to be addressed with a long-term data base.